December 2021 Newsletter - Aayush Grover
Impacting the Healthcare Industry with Artificial Intelligence
👋 hey, it’s aayush…
December 2021… Seems like just yesterday that I was sitting on my bed last year in my Grade 9 French class zoning out while my teacher French teacher recited conjugations: “Je suis, Tu es, Il est, Elle est…” A realization that I’ve come to this past month is that I can’t even recognize myself a year ago. I see this shell of a boy pursuing academic achievements such as obtaining the golden “97% average.” I see a kid doing 6 different extracurriculars because he felt like he was supposed to and that’s what was considered impressive. I see a naive freshman trying to please everybody around him by doing what society deems to be the “conventional path to success.” However, the biggest thing that I truly see is insecurity and unhappiness. Before I start talking about all of the things that I’ve been doing this month, I want to let you in on all of the things that I’ve been feeling this month. After all, these newsletters aren’t just a list of my monthly achievements - it’s a door that leads to who that boy was, sitting on that bed in my French class last year, and who I am now.
😅 time to reflect…
All of our lives have changed significantly within the past year, there’s no doubt about that. That being said, COVID isn’t the only thing that’s been pivotal for my life this year. Within the past few months, the biggest thing I’ve been working towards is trying to understand myself and why I do the things I do. In a constant environment that’s driven by grades and status, where getting the next 99% in a course or bragging rights because you only slept for 1 hour is what everybody seems to chase, having a strong ‘why’ becomes really difficult and seemingly unnecessary. Last year, I worked my ass off to achieve a 97% average. In the end, I actually managed to achieve it - this was everything I wished for. My lowest grade was a 95%, I had ULTIMATE bragging rights, having this average means that I’m objectively considered a smart kid… right? If that’s the case, then why didn’t I feel smart? I achieved my goal, why wasn’t I happy or gratified?
June of 2021 was the very first time I realized that I’m unhappy with the trajectory of my life. I’m unhappy with constantly chasing the next grade, just to realize that it will never be enough for me. I’m sick of trying to please the standards of this society that will never make me feel like I’m enough because there will ALWAYS be somebody who’s academically more gifted than me. Acknowledging this wasn’t enough though.
These past few months have truly been significant for me in terms of finally choosing to do things that really have a strong impact on me, things that matter to me, whether or not it’s what society expects of me. Does it mean my grades have dropped? Yup. Is my average still 97%? Nope. Am I okay with that? For once, I genuinely feel like I am, because I’m finally happy with myself and what I’m doing. I’ve decided to put my time and energy into something that I really care about: impacting the healthcare industry. I’ve mentioned this in previous newsletters, but never really elaborated on why this is so important to me.
🏥 impacting the healthcare industry.
When I was 8 years old, I was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder known as Kikuchi, a disorder that has symptoms that closely resemble that of cancer. However, that’s not what my family was told when we initially entered the hospital. I remember this young version of me being in the hospital because my lymph nodes were swollen. I remember the doctors pulling my parents aside with a concerned look. I didn’t quite hear what they said, but I didn’t need to. The looks on my parent’s faces as they heard that their son may have cancer was one that I can never forget.
I’m incredibly lucky to say that I’ve grown up incredibly healthy and cancer-free, something I feel blessed for every single day. That being said, 1 in 20 patients who receive a diagnosis are misdiagnosed. That’s 12 million people in America every single year. I’m grateful for the healthcare industry that we have today, but it’s an industry still victim to human error. Improvements to this industry don’t just affect hundreds of people or even thousands… It affects millions of people, millions of people subject to a flawed system that controls the course of their lives. “Isn’t it a little naive to think that YOU can change the healthcare industry?” Yup, it might be naivety - but I would much rather spend hours and hours working towards something I genuinely care about than chasing a level of academic excellence in which the goal post will always be just out of reach.
🫁 diagnosing pneumonia from medical images with artificial intelligence.
Alas, we’ve finally arrived at the part of the newsletter where I talk about what I did this month. I began (and completed) my first project using Artificial Intelligence: diagnosing pneumonia with Artificial Intelligence. I achieved a 91.7% accuracy on my model (before it began overfitting) using Convolutional Neural Networks and it was overall a success. I learnt a LOT about coding in PyTorch, as well as data overfitting. If you want to learn more about this project, I’m writing an article about it which will be out shortly with all of my code, as well as an explanation of the Artificial Intelligence logistics of the project.
Before moving on, I wanted to identify a key takeaway from this project for me. The biggest thing that I’ve realized is that the way I’m trying to go about impacting the healthcare industry may not be entirely correct. This project began as a means to improve my skills in Artificial Intelligence. However, it gave me insight that extends much further than that. Realistically, a 91.7% accuracy on a model as such isn’t enough to truly make any real impacts. It might assist medical professionals in avoiding human error, but the misclassified images were images that were generally difficult to analyze, explaining why they were misclassified. This experience led me to one key takeaway…
🧠 fall in love with the problem, not the solution…
I’ve started to realize that I’ve been trying to mould Artificial Intelligence (a solution) into fitting the requirements of the problem (the healthcare industry). That’s not to say that AI doesn’t have incredible implications within this industry. It’s also not to say that I’m not going to continue pursuing AI, especially when it’s something that I genuinely enjoy. That being said, big issues such as the one that’s been presented to me within this industry are multi-faceted. It’s not as simple as “Use AI to Impact Healthcare.” There are so many different problems within this industry such as ER wait times, potential improvement to diagnostic medicine, patient self-care, etc. When approaching these problems, the biggest thing that’s had significant impacts on the way I think about them is the realization that my goal isn’t to solve some problem with a very specific technology…. it’s to solve a very specific problem with some technology. It doesn’t matter if I’m using AI or Blockchain or Quantum Computing… what I care about is the real, tangible impact.
🤯 wow… it’s been a crazy month.
Out of every month and newsletter that’s come out so far, this one has been the most influential to me (yes, more influential than the NYC conference newsletter as well). To be 100% honest, when I started writing this newsletter, I genuinely didn’t know what to write. I realized that I grew so much this month, but not in the way I felt I needed to write about. I worked on a cool AI project but I didn’t make some big achievements. I definitely didn’t go to any major conferences like I did in the past few months, and I haven’t necessarily done anything exciting on paper. It turned out that my growth this month wasn’t… material. It wasn’t something I could display by sending you a GitHub link or showing you an article I wrote, but I could show it just by talking. In future newsletters, I’ve decided that I want to talk both about my personal growth as a person alongside my professional growth, definitely looking forwards to that! Enjoy the rest of the holidays, spend time with your families, and have an awesome New Year!
AAYUSH! It’s crazy that I met you a few months ago and you’ve grown so muchhh I hope you have an amazing start to 2022 💟
Great newsletter! I came to exact same realization as you and now, looking back, I'm almost ashamed of myself a year ago and can't imagine going back to that type of lifestyle. And good luck on your pneumonia project!